Simple Backup

Motivation

These shell scripts extend rsync as a backup tool and add simple features like automatic rollovers. rsync combined with its --link-dest= option is a powerful way to backup remote linux systems. The --link-dest= option lets us specify a previous backup to hard link against. That is, if we find the same file, unchanged, in the current backup, just make a hardlink to the previous backup. Google for the difference between hard and soft links in linux for any clarificaiton here.

Usage

1. Generate (if you haven't yet) and copy root's ssh public key to the machines you want to backup using (ssh-keygen) and ssh-copy-id

2. Copy example.config.example in the configs directory and rename it to something ending in .config. Edit the three options there as appropriate (machine IP, what directory to backup and what to skip)

3. Test. Run ./bin/backup_all.sh to capture one backup. I usually setup the BACKUP_DIR in the previous step to be /tmp/ to test that everything works ok before changing it to / and scheduling a cron job.

4. Schedule using cron. Something like this should work. 5 0 * * * /simple_backup/bin/backup_all.sh if you want to run at 12:05 AM and you've checked this repo to /simple_backup/

Where is my stuff?

The scripts figure out what directory they are in and will backup to the servers and write logs into the logs directory along side bin where the scripts live. The currents directory will point to the most recent backup for each server.